I cover real estate, writing about everything from trends in the housing market to ultra high-end luxury listings to data-based cities lists. Real estate is in my blood thanks to a realtor for a mom and a property developer/landlord for a dad. I have had a front row seat for the real estate market's inflation and subsequent crash over the past decade, watching my dad carry on with underwater mortgages and my mom struggle to put home sales together. I have been both a homeowner and a renter in the New York area and can't decide which I prefer.
I am also a regular guest on the 'Forbes on Fox' show on Fox News every Saturday morning and can sometimes be found discussing the major business headlines of the week on MSNBC's 'Weekends with Alex Witt.'
Before taking on the real estate beat, I worked as an Anchor/Reporter in Forbes Video. These days I shoot videos of crazy homes.
I graduated from New York University in 2009 with a BA in Anthropology and prior to that I worked in the other end of media as a recording artist with Sony.
If you have tips, story ideas or listings to submit for consideration, email me at mbrennan@forbes.com.

What $1 Million Buys In America's Most Expensive Zip Codes

Los Angeles’ swanky Beverly Hills is famous for its celebrity residents – and the soaring home prices that accompany them. The 90210 ZIP code boasted a $3,469,891 median listing price this summer, good for fifth place on our annual Most Expensive Zip Codes list, and the fanciest estates command prices in the tens of millions — comedienne Ellen DeGeneres wants $49 million for her recently listed compound.

Don’t have the budget of an A-list celebrity? The merely moderately wealthy with a million dollars to throw around still have a chance to score digs in the exclusive ZIP code made famous by a certain prime-time TV show.

That kind of money might buy a princely mansion or big acreage in many parts of the U.S., but in these wealthy communities, you’d be lucky to get a home big enough to raise a family, let alone a whole acre accompanying it. In many of these places, available land is in short supply and the coveted rights to sizable plots fetch exorbitant prices.

In Beverly Hills, $1.1 million is the asking price for a 3,063-square foot, single-story house crammed onto a quarter-acre of land. The property has an outdoor kitchen area and “room for a pool,” according to its Sotheby’s International Realty listing.

In the summer playground of the Hamptons, there are no houses listed for as little as a million right now in the village of Sagaponack, N.Y., (11962), No. 3 on our list this year, but $850,000 will buy a 3-acre parcel of undeveloped land. In Wainscott (11975), a hamlet of the town of East Hampton, $1.075 million will score a quaint 1,960-square-foot home on a little less than an acre of land.

In Atherton, Calif., (94027), a Silicon Valley community home to billionaire technorati like Meg Whitman and Eric Schmidt, you won’t find anything listed for less than $1.3 million save one West Atherton pre-foreclosure for which the sellers are asking $650,000, according to Trulia.com. On Maryland’s Gibson Island (21056), a posh Chesapeake Bay vacation destination sought out by Washington’s political royalty, there’s nothing listed for less than $1.9 million.

In Greenwich, Conn., the New York City suburb that’s the hedge fund capital of the world, a million dollars won’t snag you a home in the priciest 06831 ZIP code (median home prices there are $2,942,959) but tack on about $100,000 and you could be in the running for three- and four-bedroom houses listed in nearby Greenwich and Old Greenwich ZIPs 06830 and 06870, respectively.

Perhaps the best bang for seven figures is a 788-square-foot, one-bedroom condo listed for $1.05 million in 10023 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The bright side: that’s actually not so small by NYC standards, and the apartment is already rented out to a tenant – it could pay for itself as an investment.

For complete coverage of the 500 Most Expensive ZIP Codes in America, click here.

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